(I’m posting Fridays, because if you like what you see and you’re a parent/aunt/uncle/friend of the family, you can forward, text, Instagram, or tiktok the story to your child/niece-nephew/friend-of-the-family – and your significant young adult would have Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday to read it, so it won’t interfere with the Homework Schedule.)
By chance, she got to the intestine elevator just as a group of noisy fans dressed in neon green tumbled out and sprinted down the hall. Emerald got in, studied the “buttons”, then jabbed the one at the bottom marked C. Rashida wasn’t sprinting down the hall screaming for people to “Grab her! She’s not supposed to be here!”
The doors squelched shut and the bolus started to move.
By the time she reached the Core of the ship, she was calm again. She knew Rashida couldn’t be directly behind her – the bolus was still stood open for Emerald, jammed with a stick that had been laying nearby. Straight ahead was stupid Jump mob, staring into the air where a life-sized holographic projection of the game was going on. To her right, the mob crowded a real playing field – football, she supposed, though it looked like it could be used both for regular football – Americans called it “soccer” for some reason – and normal world football.
To her left, there was nothing but forest and several gravel covered paths that ran off into it. She ran, crossing the grass, then joining the trail. Running had never been a problem for her. She liked to run when people let her. She and Dad spent hours running beaches along the Gulf when she was eleven. Her and Mom would literally run together into Telchac Puerto -- Mom would take it easy! -- before the military infiltrated their research station. Then they banned anyone from her family from going into any town. They’d become prisoners in their own home.
She scowled and veered from thoughts of Mom and Dad and focused on the soldiers.
She still had no idea why they showed up when they did. It wasn’t like Mom and Dad hadn’t been preaching their “Shattered Spheres” theory. And the knife-footed robot had followed the soldiers. She didn’t remember soldiers at the dig site. Then again, she didn’t notice a lot of things. Had they been there all along and she just hadn’t noticed until recently – when her own age had gotten closer to the age of the newest soldiers? Or were the making Mom and Dad argue more? Were the soldiers somehow the cause of the arguments?
It finally penetrated her intense focus on her parent’s arguments that she could hear voices. She slowed down, then stopped, noticing her surroundings for the first time. The forest was gone, the ground was drier and the trees more stunted and farther apart. She wasn’t sure, but it felt warmer, too.
In the distance were a group of young people – most of them older than her. One kid came out of a stand of tall savannah grasses and ran up to the others who appeared to be picking something off of the trees, skidding to a halt. Chubby, huffing and puffing, he wasn’t dressed like them. Most of them flicked the bugs, banking them off a funneled collection bottle which made a hollow popping sound. One of the boys flicked a bug at the kid, who batted it away irritably.
She stared in surprise. An elderly man squatted apart from them, ignoring the confrontation, examining a different tree using a magnifying glass. She recognized him as well. He’d been to the Chicxulub station a year or so ago. Dr. Antoine Clerck. She also remembered he’d been condescending to Mom and outright rude to Dad – whom he thought was a servant.
Emerald squatted down and waddled closer to the group, stopping beside what was supposed to be an African termite mound. It wasn’t. She’d seen arboreal termite mounds in trees in the Yucatan jungle. There were bugs all over it. This one only looked like it was alive.
The chubby kid who’d just run up stopped and the box he was carrying, with some kind of drooping wires and antennae taped together with gray tape swung around from his back.
He caught it deftly then ran up shouting, “Doctor Clerck, I can count your ants by registering them on this energy scanner I invented last night!”
The group stood up straight as one. The oldest boy cried, “No, Zech!” He tried to wave the younger boy off. When the boy named Zech ignored him, the oldest guy took off running, dragging two of the girls after him. Another boy retreated with them.
Zech pressed a button.
Every ant on the tree exploded at the same time, sending a miasma of vaporized formic acid into the still, hot air. The rest of the group scrambled to get away, screaming and choking.
Emerald thought the tree looked like it had been engulfed in a thunderhead.
Zech made weak thunder sounds and said, “Oops.” He flashed a fake smile, tears from the slowly dissipating formic acid cloud streaming down his face.
The group stared at him incredulously. After the coughing fit, a boy who’d been standing near Dr. Clerck called from a safe place, “Nice job, Yuck-ariah. You just fried Dr. Clerck’s favorite bug bush!”
Dr. Clerck’s face had turned an unusual shade of red beneath a thin halo of gray hair. He stepped forward, absently patted the other boy on the shoulder and said, “You have a magnificent ability of understating the obvious, Hood.” Crossing to the boy named Zech, he held out his hand. The boy backed up, hugging the scanner. Dr. Clerck actually growled as he said, “Give me your machine, Mr. Brewbub.” He stepped back.
Zechariah Brewbub? She felt sorry for him for an instant. It wasn’t a name she’d forget any time soon.
“I will not wait another instant to call Security on the emergency band if you do not hand that thing over to me. There are ten thousand hectares of cultivated land on this ship. The work we do here is the single most important thing anyone does on this ship. Your...toy can destroy us all!”
Zech gave it to him. Dr. Clerck took the box, examined it intently then dropped it on the ground and jumped on it six times, grunting, muttering and cursing out loud once. The rest of the kids looked startled. The older man picked up the pile of debris before the small robot scurrying out of a tree trunk arrived to clean up the mess, handed them to Zechariah, saying, “You’re fired, Mr. Pubtub. Don’t come back or I will have you court martialed, confined to quarters, and executed before a firing squad!” The boy looked at him, stunned. Dr. Clerck pointed down ship and shouted, “Go!”
Emerald looked up as an immense Zeppelin thrummed as it flew low over them, stirring the air. The cloud of formic acid from the exploded ants blew over the group of kids and Dr. Clerck, driving them into the forest, screaming and cursing.
Hanging his head, Zech walked away into the savannah, off the gravel path and stopped at a different fake termite mound. He patted the side of it and a door opened up. He stepped in and was gone.
Emerald felt sorry for him – but she also didn’t want to cross paths with him. He was obviously someone to avoid. She waited a bit, wiping her wrist across her forehead. It was hot in this part of SOLAREX. It hadn’t been this hot in the Core by the 3V screen.
She scurried across the grassland and did the same thing Zech had done, patting the termite mound. The bolus inside was still disgusting, but she’d watched carefully when Rashida was choosing a floor. She had no doubt Rashida or SOLAREX security could find her wherever she went but she was tired of Rashida. She punched a random button and the doors squelched shut.
This one was larger than the one she’d been in the first time. It slid faster, too. She could just feel the acceleration this time. After a few minutes, she jammed the button again.
When it didn’t slow, she started to be afraid…
Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0apPONo8JzRISufFs1p-gZFYlV3wz92HxAZGGbjRwiAXxX3J8oKGf7JwmOETPGjr9JWwKL3r_5iMto5npeYPIeaj8SMgAs5idy_9WKD63CCdJUO8ITjfdeZJntMnTg1anXTU-FXTS97c/s320/Heirs+of+the+Shattered+Spheres+Emerald+of+Earth++++300dpi.jpg
Guy Stewart is a retired teacher and counselor, with science fiction for young people and adults published in ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact; podcast at CAST OF WONDERS; and in CRICKET the Magazine for Children. For links to his other works, go to https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/. For an interview about EMERALD OF EARTH, try this: http://www.writersandauthors.info/2015/09/interview-with-guy-stewart.html
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